My PSU popped on Sunday, so while waiting for a replacement I’ve read most of A Song for Arbonne buy Guy Gavriel Kay and a couple of Montalbano Novels. Also recently finished Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon.
I’m currently reading a book by Vlad Kreimer - maker of synths Lyra8 and Pulsar23. Although the book is not about music or synthesis, it contains interesting philosophy ideas. And this book is free!
i remember seeing that speaker in an issue of Wired 25 years ago. I always wondered whether it was any good
Ah yes the Nautilus, I vaguely remember it cost as much as a house at the time. A sad indicator to me of how much house prices have risen since and how I have even less chance of owning either now.
Just finished Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which was ace. (Sequel out next year. Yay!)
Next on the starting block…
- 2000 TC: Standing on the Verge of Getting It On by John Higgs
- High Weirdness by Erik Davies
- Wiffle Lever to Full! by Bob Fischer
Edit: This is me on Goodreads, if anyone’s at all interested.
Nice. Have you read Children of Ruin yet? It’s pretty good. Sci-fi and fantasy are my literary comfort foods and recently got into Neal Stephenson and Dan Simmons and for outright silliness Jasper Fforde and David Wong.
Yes, I’ve read Children of Ruin Time. Wasn’t expecting that ending! Not read the second one yet but it’s in the tsundoku pile. I like Dan Simmons very much. I reread his Ilium and Olympus every five years of so. Lots of fun. Not got around to Neil Stephenson, yet. Also like Peter F. Hamilton a lot as well. Sorry, waffling.
Dogs of war slightly puts me in mind of the rat things from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.
Waffle away. Children of Ruin is the sequel to Children of Time btw.
One of the lighter books I read recently that I enjoyed was Grunts! by Mary Gentle which is set at the time of Lord Of The Rings where some orcs are hit with a spell that makes them act like US Marines in the Vietnam war.
Whoops! I meant Children of Time. Brain not working.
Grunts! looks interesting. I’m not one for fantasy so much but that looks like a good take. Edit: Grabbed the eBook after reading a sample. Looks great!
Is that one a good place to start with his books? I’ve never read any by him.
Yes, it’s a very good place to start. The Baroque Cycle (four linked books starting with Quicksilver) is his masterpiece IMO and not really SF, more historical fiction, but it’s a rollicking read.
Snow Crash is quite funny and an interesting satire but I don’t feel it’s dated particularly well. Cryptonomicon is better in my opinion and, because it’s set in the then current year (1999), has dated a lot less. The general critique of Stephenson is that he can’t write women and his endings are bad. I think the first is true but the second is just some peoples need for a happy ending.
My favorite Neal Stephenson books are:
#1: The Diamond Age
#2: Cryptonomicon
#3: Anathem
also Interface (written under the pseudonym Stephen Bury) is pretty good, and unfortunately topical for our times.
I only read the Diamond Age recently and wasn’t prepared for how psychedelicly crazy it was. Bordering on Ribofunk or Vurt.
My apologies for not replying sooner, I forgot, life has been strange for all of us.
I can see no real differene between meditation and jazz, although I don’t play an instrument. I suppose it depends on a person’s understanding of what meditation is, maybe for some it means formal meditation. Personally I understand meditation to mean applied awareness that can be practiced at any time, under any circumstances. I remember watching one particular double bass player so deeply invested, so utterly in the moment, I couldn’t see an opening for thought to interfere. His commitment was so pure, he became the object of meditation for me, I just didn’t know it then
I can see the attraction of a work that compares two ways of learning to be completly aware and to see where these remarkable men find the overlap between these two great traditions beyond the similarities of their meditative aspects.
I hope this finds you untroubled.
Recently caught up on Nebula Award nominees and am currently reading and enjoying this novella :
I took an on-line course with Robert Anton Wilson once, and this was one of the books he chose for it.
Honestly, I didn’t get through it. Not that I disliked it. But it was a lot or work!